Prior proposals for making picture records having visual material embedded in the record have utilized two transparent foils of plastic material and various techniques for securing the visual material captive therebetween. Such foils, being only a few mils thick, are very flexible. The foils warp and become wavy rendering the record unsaleable or, if occurring after purchase, cause the tone arm to jump track and leads to other malfunctioning results. To avoid these and other shortcomings proposals have been made to stiffen the record by inserting a plastic or resinous core layer between the sheets of visual material. Such a layer is formed by dispersing a hot lump of the resin placed centrally between the sheets of visual material to form a thick relatively stiff core having a diameter at least as great as the two foils. Two different modes of utilizing this technique are disclosed in Lash U.S. Pat. No. 3,578,539 and in Bardowicks et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,102,730. This expedient has been successful in providing a much stronger and more rigid record than that taught by the patent to Utiger U.S. Pat. No. 3,247,298. However, resort to these reinforcing expedients poses new problems. A lump of opaque material was invariably utilized and the insertion of this lump between separate sheets of visual material increased the number of assembly operations and the opportunities for assembly errors and resulted in a very high reject rate of unsaleable merchandise. A particularly serious cause of rejects is the tearing, rumpling, or damage to one or both sheets of visual material apparently produced by the drag forces of the lump as it is dispersed outwardly during the pressing operation.